Reading Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief
by TheSarahTops
Summary: A group of demigods from the time of second Great Prophecy travel to the past and meet up with the past Greek gods to read the books of the future. In order to do this, no more secrets can be held. Will they open up to each other, or will it take the books to do it for them? [Warning: Spoilers!]
1. Introductions

**DISCLAIMER!:**

I do _**not**_ own **Percy Jackson and the Olympians,** ** _OR_** **Heroes of Olympus.** ** _ALL_** of the **bold** lines in the story will be DIRECTLY TAKEN FROM Rick Riordan's amazing books. I do **not** own **any of the characters** , except for Luna and especially do not own the story of Percy Jackson.  
This story takes place after **Son of Neptune** in **Heroes of Olympus.**  
Spoilers. (Derp)

(Please no copyright me/sue me D: or take down my story)

"Come and meet my other family."

Percy saw the hull of the Argo II slowly descending in all its glory. A plank settled down as Reyna called the Romans to stand down. Many demigods came out of the ship, a blonde, tall, and lean boy with one of his arms draped around a girl with a bronze dagger strapped to her belt, and has choppy uneven brown hair, but it shimmered in the light and changed appearance to Percy's preferences, which made her look beautiful.

Then he spotted a blonde girl with her hair in a pony tail, but bits of hair framed her face. She wore an orange Camp Half-Blood and blue jean shorts.

"Annabeth!" Percy cried out in relief.

She also found Percy, and they both rushed towards each other. Despite the sudden tension from the movement, Percy felt like the rest of the world didn't matter, and time stopped as they took in each other's frame and kissed.

"Seaweed brain," Annabeth muttered. Then Percy felt a spot on his wrist being pushed upwards, as he saw the world spinning and he landed on the ground with a thump! He felt a bone push into his chest and an arm wrapped around his neck. "Gah—" he said, trying to breathe.

"Never— scare me like that again, disappearing for months!" Annabeth whispered, even though he had broke that "promise" several times.

-Time Skip to when Leo got possessed and starts shooting the Romans-

"Everybody get on board!" Annabeth shouted.

"Get them!" Octavian pointed his dagger, pilum, whatever at them.

Suddenly, everything stopped. Eagles stopped in mid-air, Frank and Hazel were stuck in a running position up the plankboard, and the Romans stood still in a panic. Only Annabeth knew she was aware of everything going on, so did everyone else.

A bright light that looked like darkness at the same time flashed in the air, and no one looked at it directly in the moment of frozen time, thankfully, so nobody melted into ashes.

"Who— are you?" Annabeth asked suspiciously, even though they were basically frozen in time, she could still move her eyes and talk... apparently.

The—Annabeth assumed was a goddess— sighed. "Not a surprise you don't recognize me," she said. "I am Luna, goddess of protection.

Annabeth raked her head for anything about a goddess of protection, or a goddess named Luna.

"Greek or Roman?"

Luna scowled at her. "Greek," she answered.

"Why are you here, greaca goddess?" Octavian asked suspiciously, with obvious distaste.

She scowled at him. "I am here to bring a group of demigods into the past, to read about the past, present, and future, and stop Gaea so the world doesn't crumble."

Annabeth thought she was being too blunt. But before she could react or anybody else, all she remembered was fading into nothing but darkness.

"Ugh, where are we?" Annabeth muttered groggily, rubbing her head as she sat up. She was in a room— Mount Olympus! she realized.

She looked around her, and she recognized everyone. Percy, Jason, Piper, Leo, the guy and gal she met on the ship, Frank and Hazel, Annabeth remembered, and Thalia, Grover, Nico di Angelo, and... Will Solace? Annabeth didn't know much about him, except he was head of Apollo or something.

"Is everybody okay?" Percy mumbled to the right of Annabeth. Percy! Annabeth thought. Thank the gods he didn't disappear on her again! She wrapped her arms around him in a big bear hug, nearly squeezing him to death. "Can't— breathe— gods, Annabeth," he choked out.

As everybody stood up, a blazing hot white light shone at the thrones of the gods, so bright that even Apollo would be jealous. They all averted their eyes and popped all the gods and goddess. Annabeth recognized all of them, and her mom, and some—other gods— that she wasn't so pleased to see.

Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysus, Ares, Hephaestus, Apollo, Hermes, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Demeter, and Hera. Her least favorite goddess, you could say. "What are you doing here?" Zeus thundered. "And what are we doing here?"

Another flash of light so quick it didn't hurt them, and the same goddess, Luna, appeared, her black silk gown flowing in perfect wind harmony. "You," Annabeth said, and tried to control her distaste for this goddess.

"Yes, me," she snickered. "You may wonder why I've brought you all here. Well, actually, I brought you all here to read these books," she said, and waved her hand over two stacks of books near the hearth.

"We've been brought here to... read?" Frank said, obviously confused.

Some of the gods agreed. "How absurd!" "Reading hasn't really been my— thing."

"Silence!" Luna bellowed, and her voice amplified and shook the whole temple. The gods and demigods immediately quieted. "Oh, ya, where's Hades? I thought I brought him here..." she muttered, then snapped her fingers and a sleeping Hades in a comfortable position appeared in the sky and fell right on top of Zeus and his throne with a large THUMP! "Ow," he moaned.

"Gerroff me!" Zeus thundered at his brother.

Thankfully, Hades wore his usual black cloak with death woven in the fabric, so it wasn't all that awkward.

Some gods groaned in seeing Hades for the occasion. "Why is he here?" So did some of the demigods, but Nico perked up in seeing his dad here.

Luna snapped her fingers again, and all the male god thrones moved to make space for another throne, which popped up through the ground. The throne was made of obsidian with silver linings, and a skull at the top. For Hades, obviously.

Luna gestured to Hades to sit in his new throne, and Hades sat down, wearing a smug look on his pale face.

"I have brought you all here to read these— books, to help you prepare for the upcoming battles ahead." The gods tensed at her words. "You must trust one another and work together to rid of Kronos, the Titans, and defeat Gaea!" she shouted, raising the ceiling roof. The gods immediately noticed she said their worst enemies. They started to worry and a few demigods bit their nails nervously about reading in front of the gods.

"How exactly did you get a hold of the past and future and these— books?" Athena regarded coldly.

Luna smirked. "Do you not recognize me? Maybe all these years in the Underworld made me absent from everything. No matter, we will all introduce ourselves."

Even though she didn't answer Athena's question, everybody waited to hear from this mysterious new, goddess, who radiated so much power in her aura that Annabeth could not imagine how she didn't notice before. As Annabeth looked closer, she could see Luna's features more clearly. Her eyes were different colors, one icy blue and one bright yellow, like a serpent's or Hades'.

Don't know why, but she swore Hades got a shocked expression on his face from realizing something for at least a second, but it soon quickly dissappeared.

"I'm Luna, goddess of protection. Which includes dreams, darkness, the night, relations, and guardians," she spoke softly. "I'm a minor goddess, *cough cough* and I'm the daughter of..."

Everybody leaned in.

"Wait, isn't Aphrodite the goddess of love?" Piper butted in. "How are you the goddess of relations _—"_

Luna cleared her throat. "Protection," she says, as that clears it all up. "Protecting relations, protecting dreams, Aphrodite makes love happen and causes it to break up."

"Oh," Piper understood.

Then she scoffed. "Seriously, is it that hard to imagine?" Suddenly Nico perked up. "Luna?" He said softly. "Is it really you?"

"Of course it's me! Ugh, how many years do I have to spend with you, wrap my arms around you and sleep with you for you to even recognize me?"

Suddenly the air went cold. _Did she say sleep with him—?_

 _"_ It's not that, I just... was shock _—"_ he tries to explain, but gets cut off.

"Daughter of Athena and Hades, seriously, how can you not see anything?"

Some mouths fell open, as they looked between Athena and Hades. Athena flushed a bit but didn't look too surprised, but Hades smug look looked even bigger for some reason, and he puffed out his chest slightly.

"Whatever, I'm also the goddess of the past, present, and future, and I can foresee your fate, blah blah blah," she spoke without enthusiasm. "Let's get started with the demigod introduction, shall we? All of you fellow shortians—" Annabeth swore that wasn't a real word, "—should know each other, so let us amuse the gods, shall we?"

All the demigods stood up and faced the gods, and went in turns.

"I'm Percy Jackson, er, son of Poseidon."

"WHAT! You broke the oath?!" Zeus thundered at Poseidon this time.

Poseidon looked shocked but surprisingly proud and calm. "Says the one who broke it before me and did so several times," he muttered under his breath, where Zeus only heard a faint sentence.

Zeus looked beyond angry, both at the reveal of Percy and that Poseidon knew he couldn't argue, and looked about ready to explode when Jason cut in front of him.

"I'm Jason Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, I mean, Zeus Zeus," he said, clearly not noticing he said his name two times.

A couple of snickers can be heard from the group behind him, and so did Athena as a smile escaped from the corner of her mouth. But then she noticed how Jason had said _Jupiter_ then quickly corrected it. She narrowed her eyes, and watched in satisfaction as he broke into a sweat.

"See," Poseidon summed up.

"I'm Thalia—," Thalia said, "—Grace, and I'm a daughter of Zeus," pointedly looked in his direction. "Also hunter of Artemis. Artemis smiled at her future Hunter.

"Again," Poseidon whispered to Hades. He snickered in response, not liking his brother but eager to gang up on Zeus.

"Thalia?" Zeus asked, bewildered. "Aren't you a— weren't you a pine tree?"

"Not anymore," Thalia muttered under her breath, but didn't give any explanation.

"Frank Zhang, son of Mars," Frank growled under his breath, still not happy with that.

"Mars?" Zeus asked. "Who's Mars?"

"Oh, uh, Ares, I mean," he quickly corrected.

"Hazel Levesque, daughter of Plu—Hades," Hazel said, in a much cheerful mood than usual.

Hades' mouth went dry. "Hazel?" He said in disbelief, how can you be al—"

"I'm pretty sure you will find out later," Luna said, probably ready to get up and leave.

"I'm Piper McLean, daughter of Aphrodite."

"My my, what happened to you, dear? Why are you wearing such... awful clothes?" Aphrodite examined her daughter.

"Mother!" Piper cried.

"Grover Underwood, satyr, at your service," Grover said, bowing to the gods. And— "Artemis," Grover bleated faintly, then collapsed. Percy pulled him away in a haste.

"Nico di Angelo, son of Hades," Nico murmured.

"Then Hades broke it too!" Zeus cried.

"Actually, no, I was born before... the oath," he said. "You should remember me, Uncle. You tried to blow me up," he said, glaring at Zeus.

"Oh, uhm, actually I don't remember—"

"And, Annabeth Chase," Percy said, waving at Annabeth. It broke Annabeth's train of thought, and she was glad he introduced her because she was not paying any attention.

"What? Oh, yeah, daughter of Athena," she said.

"And I'm Leo Valdez!" Leo bounded. "Hephaestus! Fire-wielder! Team Leo!"

"Fire wielder?" Hera asked angrily, looking pointedly at Hephaestus, a son she never liked or wanted, but still managed to become part of the council.

"We'll probably get onto that later," Percy said hastily. He looked up at Luna, who was spread out on top of Hades' throne, chillin' like the world didn't matter.

"And I'm Will Solace, head of Apollo," Will said, and some jumped, clearly didn't remember that he was there.

She yawned. "Yeah, so I'll give you the first book, I've transformed Mount Olympus into a big house, I'll come back when you're done with the first book." She said. "Oh, and time has been stopped for the whole duration of the reading, you guys went to the year before Luke stole the master bolt and darkness helm" she quickly added.

"Wait, WHAT?!" Zeus and Hades shouted. But, in a flash of harmless light, she was gone as quick as she came.

"What does she mean, she turned Mount Olympus into a big house?" Percy wondered aloud.

"WHO STOLE MY MASTER BOLT!" and "WHO TOOK MY DARKNESS HELM!" Zeus and Hades thundered.

"We'll deal with that later."

"LATER!?"

"For now, let's start reading," Hera said, picking up the book. "Who will read first?"

"I guess I will, Lady Hera," Percy stepped in.

"Wait a minute. How do we know she's telling the truth and these books are complete facts, and she's not a monster trying to trick us and lure us into a trap for—" Annabeth stated.

"—Gaea?" Percy finished for her. She nodded.

"Luna rarely kids, and if you try to question her, well, I wouldn't try," Hades said, and Percy got the feeling he wasn't joking. "Except with her annoying friends, but she sulks so much in the Underworld, I rarely hear anything."

"So, let's get started?"

 ***Luna's POV***

Phew, finally got the books, got them all together, and everything's set.

I bumped into Paris on the way to the Underworld, which is weird, wait no she's in the Underworld with me.

"What are you doing here?" I ask her, not trying to be rude but I really need to get to where I need to be.

"What did you do?" She asks suspiciously. I gave her the power to not be affected by the world's frozen time. "Oh, just y'know, trapped all the important people, sent them around 5 years back, and locked them in their own temple and gave them some books to read.

"What," she said.

"Nothing," I smile innocently. "I'm going to my room," I say, then float through a wall. She doesn't dare follow.

 **A/N**

Hey, guys, it's me, Sarah! :D

This series, each book will be its own book (if that makes sense) and will also be posted (the same) on other stories.

Wattpad story/150164648-reading-percy-jackson-the-lightning-thief

Quotev: story/10959296/Reading-Percy-Jackson-The-Lightning-Thief

Archive of our own: /works/14837090/chapters/34340816

Thanks! ;3 -Sarah


	2. I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra T

**Chapter 1**

 **I Accidentally Vaporize My Pre-Algebra Teacher**

Percy reads the title then bursts out, "Wait, is this in my point of view?!"

"Uh, yeah dude, your name is on the book," Leo states the obvious. Percy harrumphs (I thought that was only a girl thing? Frank thought) and starts reading.

"Wait, did it say you _killed your pre-algebra teacher?!_ " Poseidon interrupted, bewildered.

"Vaporized, but yeah, I guess," Percy says, and rubs his neck sheepishly.

 **Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

 **If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:**

Thalia and Annabeth laugh. "What's so funny?" Athena regarded them coldly.

"Oh," Annabeth said. "Nothing, it's just, Percy's advice is _horrible_!" They dissolve in more fits of laughter, as others join in. "Yeah, it would be practically suicide listening to _his_ advice!" Percy glares at them. "Not all the time!"

 **close this book right now.**

"Okay," Percy said, then closed the book. "Percy!" Annabeth said.

 **Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

"Actually, that's a good idea," Thalia points out.

"See?" Percy defends.

 **Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary.**

"True."

 **Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

Will shuddered. Having not experienced as bad of the things the rest of the group had, he only knew the horrors of the second Titan war, and how bad _that_ was.

 **If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**

 **But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us.**

"We all are!" The group chorused.

"And I'm the one telling you this," Percy muttered.

 **And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you. Don't say I didn't warn you.**

 **My name is Percy Jackson. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

 **Am I a troubled kid?**

"Yes," basically everybody said. The gods were confused. _What did my boy get up to?_ Poseidon wondered, and _hoped,_ that it wasn't too bad.

 **Yeah. You could say that. I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

Percy knew what this was, or _when_ it was.

"Roman and Greek stuff! How unlucky," Jason said.

"Yep, it's definitely a trap—or something," Athena observed.

 **I know—it sounds like torture.**

"Oh yeah," Leo said dramatically, throwing his arms up in the air. "A field trip to a museum, oh no."

 **Most Yancy field trips were. But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hoped. Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee.**

"Sounds like Chiron!" Piper said excitedly.

 **You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.**

"Yep! Definitely Chiron!" The group smiled, even the gods at the fond centaur instructor.

 **I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

"Nope, never," Percy said, and the gods started to wonder and worry. _What happened?_

 **Boy, was I wrong.**

"You're always wrong," Annabeth chides in. Percy glares at her in a loving sort of way. "Okay, maybe only most of the time," she changes. Percy still didn't like that, but he continued reading.

 **See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course, I got expelled anyway.**

Eyes widened. Ares smiled, and he sensed that Percy didn't like him, by the way, he looked at him, but if he was his son he would have been proud.

 **And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim.**

"In the sharks?" Hazel cried with worry, eyes widened with fear.

"We were all fine," Percy assured her.

 **And the time before that... Well, you get the idea. This trip, I was determined to be good.**

"Nope, not happening," Annabeth said, smiling at her boyfriend.

 **All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

"Grover!" A few said with relief. If something went wrong, at least Percy had someone.

 **Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

Some of the gods felt pity for Grover, especially after the _Thalia-turning-into-a-pine-tree_ incident.

 **He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

 **Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation.**

Poseidon sighed. Even if he didn't know Percy, he knew he would be the mischievous boy he saw on his face, and he really had hoped it wouldn't be that bad. Of course, he was wrong.

 **The headmaster had threatened me with death**

"What?!" Annabeth practically screamed.

 **by in-school suspension**

"Oh," she said, breathed a sigh of relief, then blushed at being the center of attention.

 **if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip. "I'm going to kill her," I mumbled. Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

"I do," he said.

 **He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch. "That's it." I started to get up,**

"No!"

 **but Grover pulled me back to my seat. "You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

 **Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension  
would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.**

Poseidon sucked in a breath. That did _not_ sound good. What happened on that trip?

 **Mr. Brunner led the museum tour. He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

"Great history, very important," Annabeth added. Athena nodded in agreement.

 **He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top and started telling us how it was a grave marker, pastel, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides.**

 **I was trying to listen to what he had to say because it was kind of interesting,**

"Of course, the only thing he finds interesting is Greek stuff," Annabeth said, staring pointedly at Percy.

"Hey!" he cried. "I like other things, like uh—"

"The only thing you get interested with is _me,"_ she chided, but stood proudly.

His face turned beet red, and he covered it with the book.

 **but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

 _Mrs. Dodds!_ Annabeth thought frantically, remembering the story Percy told her a long time ago.

"Hmm," Hades thought but didn't say anything.

 **Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

"Nervous breakdown all right," Percy said darkly.

 **From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

 **One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

"I can sense it," Athena said.

"What?" Poseidon asked.

She glared at him and turned the other direction. "Nothing."

 **Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?" It came out louder than I meant it to.**

"Oh no," Annabeth worried. She knew Percy made it out alive, someway or another, but she couldn't help but feel afraid and nervous in the sense of danger.

Leo laughed. "Percy, the first thing you want to do when you're not following the rules is to _be stealthy_ and _not get caught!_ "

 **The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story. "Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?" My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir." Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"**

 **I looked at the carving and felt a flush of relief because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

"Why do they have that picture in a museum?" Zeus sighed.

 **"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because ..."**

 **"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and—"**

 **"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

 **"Titan," I corrected myself. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

 **"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

Thalia rolled her eyes.

 **"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."**

"Wow," Annabeth said. "I didn't know you could _learn! And,_ about _history!"_

"Shut up," Percy grumbled.

 **Some snickers from the group. Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going  
to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

 **"And why, Mr. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

 **"Busted," Grover muttered.**

 **"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair. At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

"Centaur?"

"I was going to say satyr..." Dionysus mumbled.

 **I thought about his question and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

 **"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

"How is that a happy note?" Annabeth shook her head.

"Chiron is amazingly great but also weird in that way," Dionysus said, and Percy was surprised by that compliment he gave Chiron.

 **The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses. Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson." I knew that was coming.**

"Did you now?" Poseidon wondered.

 **I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

 **Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

 **"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.**

 **"About the Titans?"**

 **"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

 **"Oh."**

 **"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."**

" _That_ was reassuring," Percy grumbled.

 **I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.**

 **I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshiped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C— in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

 **I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

 **He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.**

 **The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**  
 **Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city.**

"That's not good," Poseidon noticed, giving a pointed look at Zeus.

"What? My master bolt is missing, so I'm probably worried about that," he defended.

Poseidon let it go.

 **I figured maybe it was global warming or something because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes.**

"That's not global warming, _boy,_ " Zeus said.

"Yeah, it's just the grand old might Zeus having a dance party," Percy muttered. Annabeth, Grover, and Thalia, who was sitting next to him, laughed.

"What?" Zeus said.

 **I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

 **Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

"That's odd," Thalia pointed out.

"You have no idea," Grover said, shaking his head.

 **Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody, wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

 **"Detention?" Grover asked.**

 **"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius."**

 **Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said,**

"He knows something," Artemis spoke.

Grover blushed.

 **"Can I have your apple?"**

 **I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

 **I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**  
 **Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

"Cool," Leo said, adding that to his list of cool inventions to make in the future.

 **I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

 **"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

"I really want to—" Thalia growled.

"Calm down Thalia, this happened a long time ago," Percy held her back. Probably from attacking the book.

 **I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears. I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain,**

"Nice one," Jason said.

 **screaming, "Percy pushed me!"**

"Ugh!" Hazel screamed. "I really want to—"

"Calm down," Frank told her, patting her shoulder comfortably. "This was a long time ago, and hopefully, she learned her lesson or... died."

 **Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

 **Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

 **"—the water—"**

 **"—like it grabbed her—"**

"Like Poseidon powers!"

 **I didn't know what they were talking about.**

"Of course you didn't."

 **All I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

"Of course you are." supplied Annabeth, the annoyingly pretty, witty wise girl.

 **As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

 **"I know," I grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

"Smart-talk," Poseidon grumbled. He had to be _that_ kind of kid? It'll get him killed one day!

 **That wasn't the right thing to say. "Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

 **"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."**

 **I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death. She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

"I'm surprised he had the guts to do that," Dionysus grumbled.

 **"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

 **"But—"**

 **"You—will—stay—here."**

"There's something wrong, it's like she really _hates_ Percy a lot, and more than others."

 **Grover looked at me desperately.**

 **"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

"You shouldn't say that while she could be listening," Poseidon offered.

"Thanks," Percy grumbled.

 **"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me."Now."**

"Run away!" Grover advised.

 **Nancy Bobofit smirked. I gave her my deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare. Then I turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there.**

 **She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

"I'd thought she would be smirking instead..." mumbled Hades.

"I'm sorry, _what was that?" Po_ seidon glared at him.

 **How'd she get there so fast?**

"Something is definitely wrong!" Artemis yelled.

"I know that," Percy said, but it didn't help the whispering on what was going to happen next.

 **I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

 **I wasn't so sure.**

 **I went after Mrs. Dodds.**

"No, Percy!" Poseidon called.

"You certainly have a knack for getting into trouble, don't you, young man?" Demeter said.

Percy nodded, though that should have been obvious.

 **Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

"Reading this book!" Leo cracked up.

"Oh, okay," he said again, as no one laughed.

 **I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again.**

"How does she keep doing that?" Asked Frank, oblivious to the obvious distress.

 **She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

 **Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

 **But apparently, that wasn't the plan.**

Annabeth sighed. "It never is."

 **I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

 **Except for us, the gallery was empty.**

 **Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

 **Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

"Because she's not a teacher," muttered Nico, knowing exactly what was happening. Or _happened._

 **"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

 **I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

"That should help... I hope," Poseidon nervously tugged on his beard.

 **She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

 **The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

 **She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

 **I said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

 **Thunder shook the building.**

 **"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

 **I didn't know what she was talking about.**

 **All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.**

Annabeth laughed softly and shook her head. "No, it's much, _much_ worse than reading a book."

Percy laughed, and put his arm around her.

 **"Well?" she demanded.**

 **"Ma'am, I don't..."**

 **"Your time is up," she hissed.**

 **Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.**

Poseidon _and_ Zeus both glared at Hades. "What?" he said, putting his arms up in surrender.

"Isn't she from the Underworld? Sounds like a Fury," Poseidon accused.

"Yeah, I think so," Hades replied. "So?"

" _So,_ your _pet_ is with my son and is planning to kill him!"

 **Then things got even stranger.**

 **Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

 **"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"What ho? What kind of language is that?" Thalia said, confused.

"Sounds like Zoë Nightshade, my lieutenant," Artemis pointed out.

The demigods looked at each other nervously.

 **Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

 **With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"Riptide," Poseidon faintly breathed.

Percy smiled fondly at the mention of his sword, and took out the pen from his pocket.

 **Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

 **My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

 **She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

 **And she flew straight at me.**

 **Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

"Yes," Ares hissed, sounding a lot like Mrs. Dodds, eager to read about the fight scenes.

Athena rolled her eyes at him.

 **The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!**

Poseidon smiled. "A complete natural," he complimented Percy.

Percy blushed, not used to the compliments from his dad.

 **Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

Leo shuddered. "That's a picture to never forget."

 **I was alone.**

 **There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.**

 **Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

"Very good at observing Percy," Will said.

Percy completely forgot about him, but the only thought he processed was whether he was joking or not.

 **My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

Suddenly the room burst into laughter. The first, complete laughter in a... while, actually. It was nice because it relieves tension and everybody already knows that they all made it out alive, so it relieved of their worry that naturally comes.

 **Had I imagined the whole thing?**

"No," the room answered for him.

 **I went back outside.**

 **It had started to rain.**

 **Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

 **I said, "Who?"**

 **"Our teacher. Duh!"**

 **I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

 **She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

 **I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

 **He said, "Who?"**

 **But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"He knows!" Leo said in a scary way like he was telling the future.

 **"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

 **Thunder boomed overhead.**

"It's serious if Zeus is mad," Hades muttered under his breath.

 **I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

 **I went over to him.**

 **He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

 **I handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.**

 **"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

 **He stared at me blankly. "Who?"**

"If I'll give a real compliment to that centaur Chiron, is that he's sneaky," Dionysus said. Percy knew he was lying or just making a joke, and so did he, and so did everyone else.

 **"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."**

 **He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

Percy breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the chapter and closed the book.

All the gods also breathed a sigh of relief that Percy and Grover made it out alive—for at least the first chapter.

"So _that's_ where your sword comes from!" Frank says.

Percy nodded. "Who's reading the next chapter?"

"I will," Grover volunteered.

Percy nodded and handed him the book.


	3. Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death

**A/N** Hey guys it's me, Sarah, _again_. So my friend Alexis written from another point of view during the same time go check it out.. It is an adventure story with different characters.

story/10972500/A-minor-situation-The-book-Reading-from-the-Past-from-another-point-o

K thx bai

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

 **Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death**

Grover knew _exactly_ which event this was. Nervous as he was, he started reading.

"The Fates," the gods realized. Whoever saw the string snip would be in grave danger. Assuming they did snip the yarn thread, but by the way the story was going so far it was very likely.

 **I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced that Mrs. Kerr—a perky blond woman whom I'd never seen in my life until she got on our bus at the end of the field trip—had been our pre-algebra teacher since Christmas.**

"The Mist confused even the greatest of minds, Percy," Poseidon told him.

 **Every so often I would spring a Mrs. Dodds reference on somebody, just to see if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.**

 **It got so I almost believed them—Mrs. Dodds had never existed.**

"Except she did," Leo said, staring at Percy with his eyes wide.

 **Almost.**

"So stubborn, it actually paid off," Annabeth scowled.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Percy asked nervously.

 **But Grover couldn't fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he would hesitate, then claim she didn't exist. But I knew he was lying.**

"Stupid goat," Dionysus muttered.

Unfortunately, Grover's super-ears sensed it. "What did you say?" He paused. "Oh, um, Lord Dionysus?"

Dionysus didn't answer, so Grover kept reading.

 **Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.**

 **I didn't have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions of Mrs. Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.**

Jason sighed. "The start of the demigod dreams... and nightmares."

 **The freak weather continued, which didn't help my mood. One night, a thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden squalls in the Atlantic that year.**

A lot of glares were sent towards Zeus.

"What?" he said, getting fed up with all the glares.

"Just because your master bolt is missing doesn't mean you can ruin the world," Hades said like he was reciting something, and a lot were shocked that Hades actually cared about mortals.

 **I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent out into the hallway in almost every class.**

"That's not good," Poseidon said, even though grades were the least of his worries.

 **Finally, when our English teacher, Mr. Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.**

Some gasped.

"Woah Percy, even I would go that far," Grover told Percy.

"Sorry," he replied. "I guess school isn't that good for Percy Jackson," he smiled sheepishly.

Athena shook her head. How could her daughter possibly be close to this Seaweed Brain?

 **The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.**

 **Fine, I told myself. Just fine.**

 **I was homesick.**

 **I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side, even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and his stupid poker parties.**

 **And yet... there were things I'd miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I'd miss Grover, who'd been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. I worried how he'd survive next year without me.**

 **I'd miss Latin class, too—Mr. Brunner's crazy tournament days and his faith that I could do well.**

"Of course _his_ classes would be the one he would be interested in," Dionysus grumbled.

 **As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn't forgotten what Mr. Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death for me. I wasn't sure why, but I'd started to believe him.**

 **The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin verbs? Forget it.**

 **I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.**

"Ew!" Hazel cried.

"Uh, aren't you best underground? Which means insects?" Piper asked.

"But, inside my shirt? No way!" she shrieked.

Mental note: Hazel does not like bugs. Glad the Stoll brothers aren't here. Speaking of weird company...

 **I remembered Mr. Brunner's serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes.**

"Now I realize it! It's because he _is_ thousands of years old!" Percy realized.

Grover did a mental facepalm. And he would have if he wasn't reading the book.

 **I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.**

"Again!" Percy said, exasperated at the reminded of the expectation he had to live up to.

 **I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.**

 **I'd never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr. Brunner, he could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat F I was about to score on his exam. I didn't want to leave Yancy Academy with him thinking I hadn't tried.**

Dionysus shook his head. "Why Chiron? Why not me?"

Percy looked at him confusedly. "What?"

"Well, you obviously seemed like the troublemaker type. So why listen to Chiron and not me?" he explained.

"How do you know I don't like you? You haven't even met me before now!"

"I can sense it, Peter Johnson," he replied.

That was weird...

 **I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty, but Mr. Brunner's door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the hallway floor.**

 **I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office. Mr. Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover's said "... worried about Percy, sir."**

Everybody inhales, and Grover turned red.

 **I froze.**

 **I'm not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear your best friend talking about you to an adult.**

 **I inched closer.**

Demeter shook her head disappointingly, but Aphrodite leaned in, holding in fits of giggles.

 **"... alone this summer,"**

Aphrodite's eyes opened wide.

 **Grover was saying. "I mean, a Kindly One in the school!**

"I knew it!" Poseidon said, looked at Hades for an explanation.

"What? I didn't even know about this yet," he said.

"Yes... but you do have a daughter that we never knew of, and she's controlling the past and future!" he said as if that cleared up everything.

Hades just looked confusedly at Poseidon and gestured to Grover to continue reading.

 **Now that we know for sure, and they know too—"**

 **"We would only make matters worse by rushing him," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy to mature more."**

"Too late, I'm much to 'important'," Percy says with air finger-quotes.

 **"But he may not have time. The summer solstice deadline— "**

 **"Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can."**

 **"Sir, he saw her... ."**

 **"His imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that."**

Poseidon shook his head. "So close."

 **"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."**

Thalia looked at Grover, and looked at him comforting, her face telling him it was alright, and he shouldn't blame himself for what happened in the past.

 **"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was.**

"A pine tree," Grover choked.

 **Now let's just worry about keeping Percy alive until next fall—"**

 **The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.**

"Oh no," Aphrodite said, disappointed.

There was a short period of unusual silence, and suddenly Leo started laughing. "I just realized Grover read that _Percy_ dropped the book! Oh, I thought Mr. Brunner dropped on the floor."

"How is that funny?" Thalia glared at him.

"Oh, I just... um—"

 **Mr. Brunner went silent.**

"Yeah, he died," Leo said, avoiding Thalia's glare.

 **My heart hammering,**

"He died and Percy started going overdrive."

 **I picked up the book and backed down the hall.**

 **A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.**

 **I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.**

 **A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks, then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large, dark shape paused in front of the glass, then moved on.**

 **A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.**

 **Somewhere in the hallway, Mr. Brunner spoke. "Nothing," he murmured. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."**

A few confused looks. "The winter solstice? What happened there?"

 **"Mine neither,"**

"Pan?"

 **Grover said. "But I could have sworn ..."**

 **"Go back to the dorm," Mr. Brunner told him. "You've got a long day of exams tomorrow."**

"Ugh, really, exams?" Piper said. "Don't you have more important things to do?"

Grover didn't respond.

 **"Don't remind me."**

"Yeah, don't mind me," he said, a little harsher than intended.

Everybody noticed, and Grover started to read again, but a silent mental note passed around the room.

 **The lights went out in Mr. Brunner's office.**

Hazel paused, staring at Grover.

"What?" he said, after a long wait.

"I just remembered a ghost story," she shudders.

"Are— isn't your dad Plu—I mean Hades? God of the Underworld? And death?"

"I don't like the dark..." she whispered, which made everyone confused, especially Hades and Frank, and that left everyone to wonder, _What do we really know about each other_?

 **I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.**

Hazel shuddered again. That would have been torture for here, being secretive in the dark, alone...

 **Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.**

 **Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he'd been there all night.**

 **"Hey," he said, bleary-eyed. "You going to be ready for this test?"**

 **I didn't answer.**

 **"You look awful." He frowned. "Is everything okay?"**

 **"Just... tired."**

"The same problem you were facing, Grover," Thalia said.

 **I turned so he couldn't read my expression,**

Grover nodded, and smiled sadly at Percy. It was only the beginning, which meant more and worse to come, and they already couldn't cope with everything.

 **and started getting ready for bed.**

On cue, a few demigods yawned. Grover hoped it wasn't because of him, but he noticed the sun going down, filling the room with darkness, making it harder to read.

 **I didn't understand what I'd heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I'd imagined the whole thing.**

 **But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr. Brunner were talking about me behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.**

"Because you are!" Athena said exasperated. "Can't you see?"

"Actually, I had no idea who I was or that the gods even existed. Cut me some slack, okay?" Percy said back, noting that Athena was more uncertain about him dating her daughter, being _pond scum_ and all.

 **The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.**

 **For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.**

 **"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best."**

A lot of gods nodded.

 **His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me.**

Percy turned a shade of pink.

 **Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.**

 **I mumbled, "Okay, sir."**

 **"I mean..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."**

 **My eyes stung.**

 **Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.**

Poseidon sighed. He didn't experience it, but he knew how others felt when they didn't belong because of their weird ways as a demigod. He didn't want to see his son sad.

 **"Right," I said, trembling.**

 **"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"**

Artemis shook her head. "I've been through my relationship troubles enough, even if it was one time, and that's definitely not the way."

There was a mutual agreement understanding between Artemis and Athena. _Boys._

 **"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."**

 **"Percy—"**

 **But I was already gone.**

 **On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.**

 **The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.**

"You shouldn't have heard that," Piper said, feeling bad for Percy. It was worse than how she was told she was a demigod.

Percy liked his friends, and was glad they wanted to help him, but the last thing he wanted was to be pitied.

Annabeth wrapped her arms around him, knowing exactly how he felt.

 **They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city.**

 **What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where I'd go to school in the fall.**

 **"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."**

 **They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.**

 **The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.**

 **During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen. Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.**

Thalia shook her head. "Just part of ol' Grover," then ruffling his hair.

Artemis slightly glared at Grover and Thalia, not liking the physical touches of her new Hunter in the future.

 **Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.**

 **I said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"**

 **Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"**

 **I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.**

 **Grover's eye twitched. "How much did you hear?"**

 **"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?"**

Grover winced. He did _not_ want Percy to know that he attracted all the monsters in the area, and on top of that, all his failing grades and trouble as a "regular kid."

 **He winced. "Look, Percy ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers ..."**

 **"Grover—"**

 **"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds, and..."**

 **"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar."**

Piper giggled.

 **His ears turned pink.**

 **From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer."**

 **The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:**

 _ **Grover Underwood**_

 _ **Keeper**_

 _ **Half-Blood Hill**_

 _ **Long Island, New York**_

 _ **(800) 009-0009**_

"Wait, I thought you couldn't have phones?" Jason asked.

Percy shrugged. "I guess Grover has some good satyr potatoes," he said, not meeting Grover's eyes.

 **"What's Half—"**

 **"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um... summer address."**

 **My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.**

Grover lowered his head, not thinking about the small consequences on faking his identity for his friends.

 **"Okay," I said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."**

 **He nodded. "Or... or if you need me."**

Artemis and Athena grunted in exasperation. _How could he be so clueless?_ They understood that Grover was trying to protect Percy, but he needed to do it more— settling.

 **"Why would I need you?"**

 **It came out harsher than I meant it to.**

Grover flinched again, reminded of the bad job he did as satyr and protector.

 **Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."**

"Wait, isn't that what erm, Luna does?" Annabeth asked. "So are satyrs part of her... I don't know, companions?"

"Not likely," Hades grumbled.

 **I stared at him.**

 **All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended me.**

 **"Grover," I said, "what exactly are you protecting me from?"**

Grover nervously shifted in his seat.

 **There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.**

 **After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everybody else.**

 **We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.**

Piper shook her head. "How do you observe everything in such a short amount of time?"

Percy shrugged. "Maybe I don't realize it. Maybe in the books, they add the extra details as my thoughts to— give the readers more information."

Annabeth stared open-mouthed at her boyfriend. Since when did he know anything about details and _books?_

 **The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of bloodred cherries and apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice.**

"It does," Jason said, slightly drooling. He contained himself. "Why blood cherries though? Also, when are we going to eat?"

The group noticed the moon up and the sun completely down. _How long did they read this book for?_

 **There were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I'd ever seen.**

Percy crossed his arms. "Could fit Tyson."

 **I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.**

 **All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather, silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached cotton dresses.**

 **The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.**

"Oh no," Poseidon realized.

 **I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.**

"Blood, blood, why does it have to be _blood?"_ He shuddered at the mention.

 **"Grover?" I said. "Hey, man—"**

 **"Tell me they're not looking at you. They are, aren't they?"**

 **"Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?"**

"Not funny Percy," Annabeth said seriously. "This is deadly serious."

Percy knew she wasn't joking. And, since it had already happened, he started to feel a bit guilty.

 **"Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all."**

 **The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors—gold and silver, long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.**

Everyone else in the room also caught their breath with Grover.

 **"We're getting on the bus," he told me. "Come on."**

 **"What?" I said. "It's a thousand degrees in there."**

 **"Come on!'" He pried open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.**

 **Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could possibly be for—Sasquatch or Godzilla.**

"I wonder who died..." Hazel wondered.

"Well, Perseus would have obviously, since he saw it, but I see that is not the case," Athena said, looking at Percy.

 **At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.**

 **The passengers cheered.**

 **"Darn right!" yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. "Everybody back on board!"**

 **Once we got going, I started feeling feverish, as if I'd caught the flu.**

 **Grover didn't look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering.**

 **"Grover?"**

 **"Yeah?"**

 **"What are you not telling me?"**

 **He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"**

 **"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds, are they?"**

 **His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."**

 **"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn."**

"Suspicions confirmed," Leo said. "Dun, dun, dun!"

"Leo, this is serious," Hazel scolded.

"Right, just trying to be... me," he whispered.

 **He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.**

 **He said, "You saw her snip the cord."**

 **"Yeah. So?" But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.**

"Big deal, death," Zeus pointed out the obvious.

"Why the Fates? Are they in command of Hades or something?" Percy glared at the god of the Underworld.

"Fates are... well, fate," Hades said. "It's not the matter of life or death, but the matter of the _future_ untold. Nothing can control fate, fate controls itself."

"Then how did Perseus Jackson survive when it was clearly fate's doing of death?" Zeus asked, suspiciously at Hades and Percy.

"I... don't know," Hades admitted.

 **"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time."**

Annabeth and Thalia patted Grover on the back comfortably, and the thought of Luke Castellan came up, their old _friend._

 **"What last time?"**

 **"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth."**

"Superstitious, 666," Leo said.

Piper didn't like that. Maybe she was a little superstitious, or maybe just the adventure of many lifetimes always occurring to her.

 **"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. "What are you talking about?"**

 **"Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me."**

 **This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.**

 **"Is this like a superstition or something?" I asked.**

"Yep, see?" Leo said, pointing at the book.

 **No answer.**

There was no answer in the group either.

 **"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"**

Annabeth stared open-mouthed at Percy.

"What?"

"It's just a really good guess, but I didn't know you could predict things!" she laughs.

Percy pouts.

 **He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I'd like best on my coffin.**

"Hmm, maybe some daisies, pink roses, and sacred lotuses?" Leo said, ticking off his fingers.

"That's the chapter done," Grover said, putting in the handmade sea-themed bookmark Percy made.

"It's so dark in here," Piper said. "Don't you guys have any lights or something?"

Grover thought she was being a tad bit rude, but we're in the past with the gods, so maybe it'll be okay. To be rude to the gods. With all they've done and all.

"Wait, why is it night?" Annabeth asked.

People stared at her.

"Didn't Luna freeze time when we came back?"

"Erm, I don't know exactly what's going on. Either she only froze the time you were in before you came, or the frozen time doesn't affect Mount Olympus. If that's the case, then it'll either probably be the same day over and over again, or resets to the day you came after you leave. Or—" Zeus rambled on.

"Or, the house is charmed to make sense of day and night and affects the beings inside. Well, I mean, not us gods since we don't need to eat or sleep," Hades said.

"Well, I feel like I need to sleep in a coma, do you have someplace for us?" Piper yawned.

We should have checked before reading. Usually, the temple was only thrones and a hearth and fancy pillars. But now, there were many rooms and the entrance was blocked, feeling like a normal home. There was a kitchen that was the size of Percy's apartment, which had a fridge of a supermarket, and many tables and chairs. There were two separate bedrooms, but they were even bigger than the kitchen. _One for boys and one for girls, I guess_ , Percy thought.

Apparently, the gods had a sleeping-couch mode for their thrones, too.

As Percy laid in his bed, the one light Hephaestus had put in because apparently, Luna didn't like electrical circuits or light, he thought about how much work she had put into doing this for them. Was she really a Gaea spy? Percy didn't think so... not anymore.

He and the others didn't eat because it was too late and they were all so tired, Percy remembered weird things about the house, and the book.

There were exactly six beds in the boys' bedroom, and Percy guessed there were four beds in the girls.

Percy didn't like the book, but he knew it was important for them so they could save lives and make life better for everyone before everything was destroyed. He could already see how people were losing their cool and happiness, just by reading about his first adventure as a demigod. He didn't want people to worry about him, he wanted them to be happy.

He thought about this all in his head before he drifted off.


	4. Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants

Percy didn't have any dreams, which was refreshing and unusual. _Maybe it's because we're in the past?_ He wondered.

As he woke up early, no one else was up in his room. He didn't have any time to notice anything in the room before he fell asleep, but now he sees a light on every bed, a drawer, two desks, six chairs, two closets, and he looked for the bathroom. The door was painted white wood, with fancy silver engravings on the door and handle. As Percy opened it, he gasped. It was the size of the kitchen, but a tad bit smaller.

It was a bathroom— the size of his apartment!

There were rooms in the bathroom, a room with toilets and sinks, a room for grooming and stuff, and a room that made Percy want to stay here forever. There was a shower the size of a king bed, and a huge _hot tub time machine~_ that fitted the situation perfectly.

As Percy was gaping at everything, he didn't notice the door open and Jason coming in. He too stopped next to Percy and joined in on the mouth-gaping-at-the-bathroom-game. Or could you even call it a _bathroom?_ Like bath suite!

"So, uh, let's go to it?" Jason offered.

Percy didn't have to be told twice, as he got himself ready, better than ever before.

As all the boys took turns gaping at the bathroom and got ready, they then all went together to the main room.

Hermes was busy on his caduceus when the boys walked in, and none of the other gods were present. Or the girls, for that matter.

"Where is everyone?" Percy asks Hermes, who was tapping away on his caduceus.

"Oh, huh? Oh, yeah," he said, stamping his caduceus on a box. "They're in the kitchen."

"I'll go ask them," Jason offered, so the rest stayed behind with Hermes.

"Hello?" Jason asked, walking under the beautiful celestial bronze archway. It was like the bathroom door, engraved with fancy Greek letterings and symbols matched in imperial gold.

"Oh, hey, Jason!" Piper greeted.

"Hey," he replied, kissing her cheek. "What's up?" Then he saw the mess. Everywhere, painted white wood counters with silver knobs, steel sinks that you could use to have a toy battleship war, white painted matching wood tables and chairs all perfectly sanded were covered in globs of pale slime butter.

"Uhm, we tried to make some breakfast for you all," she smiled sheepishly.

Jason looked around, and the people trying to attempt to make breakfast was all the gods minus Hera and Hermes and Piper and Thalia.

Suddenly he burst out laughing. "W-Wha— _How_ did you fail like this?"

Piper turned red, and so did some of the gods. "Uh, I guess none of us has good baking skills?"

"What about Demeter? Isn't she all about farming and nature and stuff?"

"I guess I—we were so used to not needing to eat or cook," Demeter said.

Poseidon and Zeus were in a corner, playing tug-of-war with a bowl.

"Give me— this is my part to do!" Poseidon yelled.

"No! I know how to do it better than you!" Zeus thundered back.

"Stop!" Demeter yelled. They both stopped. "You two are arguing like little kids! Or worse, a married couple!"

That immediately took effect. They dropped the pot which resounding in a big _CRACK!_ And they looked at each other, shocked and embarrassed.

"So... what are we going to eat for breakfast?" Jason asked.

They gathered around the hearth, ready and refreshed. "So, who will read this chapter?" Percy asked.

"I guess I'll," Thalia offered. She grabbed the book and opened up to the bookmark.

 **Chapter 3**

 **Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Pants**

Grover blushed down to furry goat legs.

"Uh, how'd you lose your pants?" Thalia wondered, trying not to laugh.

"It's not that... weird, for a satyr," Grover breathed.

 **Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.**

"Why?" Poseidon asked, but more of a statement than a question.

 **I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me like I was a dead man, muttering "Why does this always happen?" and "Why does it always have to he sixth grade?"**

"'Cause you are a dead man, man," Grover said.

"Yeah, I know that already. I've been in, what, four, five prophecies already?"

Jason sighed. "Probably more to come, man."

 **Whenever he got upset, Grover's bladder acted up, so I wasn't surprised when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.**

Grover blushed again, then hung his head. "How could I have just let you run off?" he kept muttering.

Percy felt bad for him, making his job ten times harder, so he patted Grover on the back and said, "Don't worry, you were fine. It's my fault, I shouldn't have tried to run and get myself killed."

 **"East One-hundred-and-fourth and First," I told the driver.**

 **A word about my mother, before you meet her.**

"Ooh!" Poseidon said, waving his hands in fists.

Everyone's eyes were on him. Aphrodite was giggling with Demeter, which was weird. Demeter?

Poseidon blushed, an unusual sight.

"Please keep reading," he squeaked.

 **Her name is Sally Jackson and she's the best person in the world, which just proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck.**

"Is that even a word?" Annabeth stared at Percy.

"For me, I guess."

 **Her own parents died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who didn't care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing program. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school her senior year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family, and no diploma.**

"So sad," Aphrodite said, shaking her head sadly. "Good people like her should be more fortunate."

Poseidon nodded, agreeing with her.

"Of course," she said, making Poseidon open his eyes in fear. "It also makes for an interesting story!" she squealed.

Athena sighed. "The only one worse than you is Cupid," she said.

Hades had to agree one hundred percent on that. Cupid was absolutely _dreadful_! He hoped nobody has to go through with Cupid. If he was completely honest, he preferred Aphrodite.

 **The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.**

Aphrodite giggled and Poseidon blushed with pride.

"You were definitely better than Smelly Gabe," Percy said.

 **I don't have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn't like to talk about him because it makes her sad. She has no pictures.**

"How?" Piper asked. "Wouldn't he have left before you were born?"

"I don't know, I just felt... connected somehow," Percy answers.

 **See, they weren't married. She told me he was rich and important, and their relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some important journey, and he never came back.**

"And sank into the sea," Poseidon said sadly, remembering Sally.

 **Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.**

"Yep," he confirmed.

 **She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I knew I wasn't an easy kid.**

"She deserves so much better," Hades whispered so no one could really hear. "I'll put her into Elysium," he promised Poseidon. This was a weird conversation, the Big Three getting along? Especially Hades?

Percy thought he was dreaming. Then he noticed how the gods may be getting along but maybe Hades just knew how everything was going to turn out.

 **Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano,**

Thalia laughed. "Ugliano? Really?"

 **who was nice the first thirty seconds we knew him, then showed his true colors as a world-class jerk. When I was young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. The guy reeked like moldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.**

"Blegh!" Aphrodite belched.

 **Between the two of us, we made my mom's life pretty hard. The way Smelly Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along... well, when I came home is a good example.**

 **I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work. Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies. The television blared ESPN. Chips and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.**

 **Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, "So, you're home."**

"Ugh, he is so bad!" Demeter said.

"What do you mean?" Poseidon asked. "I mean, I can totally see that he's... not deserving of Sally," he whispered the last part.

"He bets, he has no life, he drinks, and he smokes!" Demeter cried. "No tact, no... _life_ , and a terrible influence on the world!"

Poseidon smiled but shook his head. He knew Smelly Gabe was bad, and he totally didn't deserve Sally. It was just amusing to him but understandable that Demeter cared about the horrible effects on nature that he was causing.

 **"Where's my mom?"**

 **"Working," he said. "You got any cash?"**

 **That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the last six months?**

 **Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.**

Thalia laughed, and Hazel and Piper joined in. "Wow Percy, a walrus?"

"Actually, that's a pretty good description of him," Annabeth smirked.

 **He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most of the time. I don't know why he hadn't been fired long before. He just kept on collecting paychecks, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous, and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to provide his gambling funds. He called that our "guy secret." Meaning, if I told my mom, he would punch my lights out.**

"Splash him with salt water!" Leo advised. "Throw some sharks! Or, better yet, some crazy dolphins!"

Maybe it was just Percy's imagination, but did Leo look at Frank weird when he said that?

 **"I don't have any cash," I told him.**

 **He raised a greasy eyebrow.**

 **Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since his own smell should've covered up everything else.**

 _What if he's really a monster?_ Poseidon worried. Then he reassured himself that Percy and Sally were going to be fine— _was_ fine.

 **"You took a taxi from the bus station," he said. Probably paid with a twenty. Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?"**

"Would have been a money god," Artemis grumbled.

 **Eddie, the super of the apartment building, looked at me with a twinge of sympathy. "Come on, Gabe," he said. "The kid just got here."**

 **"Am I right?" Gabe repeated.**

 **Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in harmony.**

"Eeeeeeew!" Aphrodite shrieked. Piper wasn't a beauty diva like her mom, but she definitely agreed.

 **"Fine," I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on the table. "I hope you lose."**

 **"Your report card came, brain boy!" he shouted after me. "I wouldn't act so snooty!"**

 **I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn't my room. During school months, it was Gabe's "study." He didn't study anything in there except old car magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty cologne and cigars and stale beer.**

"Ugh!" Thalia shouted in exasperation. "Who does this guy think he is?"

"Calm down Thalia, I know he wasn't the nicest—"

"Nice?" Thalia said, her eyes widening.

Percy shifted, uncomfortable, and continued. "My mom married him to protect me. Look, it's all fine now," he reassured her. Thalia dropped it, fortunately.

 **I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.**

 **Gabe's smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs. Dodds, or the sound of that old fruit lady's shears snipping the yarn.**

 **But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover's look of panic—how he'd made me promise I wouldn't go home without him. A sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone—something—was looking for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible talons.**

 **Then I heard my mom's voice. "Percy?"**

 **She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.**

Percy smiled fondly and sadly at the mention of his past encounter with his mom.

 **My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.**

 **"Oh, Percy." She hugged me tight. "I can't believe it. You've grown since Christmas!"**

Percy blushed, and Thalia smirked, remembering how she had told her and Annabeth stories from when he was little.

She sighed, remembering the fond memories.

 **Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the candy shop in Grand Central. She'd brought me a huge bag of "free samples," the way she always did when I came home.**

 **We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I hadn't put in my letters. She didn't mention anything about my getting expelled. She didn't seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all right?**

 **I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I was really, really glad to see her.**

 **From the other room, Gabe yelled, "Hey, Sally—how about some bean dip, huh?"**

 **I gritted my teeth.**

A lot of people in the room gritted their teeth too.

"If you want I can make sure that he won't be getting anywhere in traveling," Hermes offered.

 **My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should've been married to a millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.**

Poseidon felt guilty (like the 10th time that day) about leaving Sally, but he knew he couldn't stay and interfere.

Hermes remembered in the beginning Luna said the demigods traveled to the year before Luke stole the master bolt and darkness helm, and he had a feeling that it was _his_ Luke, the one he abandoned, just like Poseidon's kid.

 **For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I told her I wasn't too down about the expulsion. I'd lasted almost the whole year this time. I'd made some new friends. I'd done pretty well in Latin. And honestly, the fights hadn't been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy Academy. I really did. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr. Brunner. Even Nancy Bobofit suddenly didn't seem so bad.**

"School can be great," Annabeth offered. "Except when you are a demigod, of course," she added.

 **Until that trip to the museum...**

 **"What?" my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out the secrets. "Did something scare you?"**

 **"No, Mom."**

"You should have told her," Grover said, with a disappointed look.

Percy sighed. "I know, I just... didn't feel like sharing everything. I thought I was going haywire."

 **I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs. Dodds and the three old ladies with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.**

"It does," Athena said.

Everyone turned to look at her. Poseidon glared confusedly at the wisdom goddess. "Are you trying to make him feel worse—"

"But she would have understood," she finished, glaring pointedly at Poseidon.

Poseidon looked down, and through his tan skin looked a tad bit redder, gods don't feel the same way demigods and mortals do.

 **She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn't push me.**

 **"I have a surprise for you," she said. "We're going to the beach."**

 **My eyes widened. "Montauk?"**

 **"Three nights—same cabin."**

 **"When?"**

 **She smiled. "As soon as I get changed."**

Percy remembered the time, and how his mother got squeezed, almost dying. He shuddered and bent his head down, trying to escape from the memories. _Maybe Nico can show me how he goes into shadows because I really need that ability._

 **I couldn't believe it. My mom and I hadn't been to Montauk the last two summers, because Gabe said there wasn't enough money.**

"Damn right there's no money," Thalia growled. "Because he used it all!" she accused Gabe.

Percy couldn't blame her for being so angry at him, he was a terrible person. A terrible step-father and a terrible husband.

 **Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, "Bean dip, Sally? Didn't you hear me?"**

"Ahhhg!" Thalia screamed and threw the book across the room, which almost hit Zeus in the face.

She blushed but then she screamed, "I HATE THAT GUY! I'm going to find him and ki—"

"Thalia calm down," Percy said.

She blushed but went to retrieve the book and continued to read.

 **I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom's eyes and I understood she was offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.**

 **"I was on my way, honey," she told Gabe. "We were just talking about the trip."**

 **Gabe's eyes got small. "The trip? You mean you were serious about that?"**

 **"I knew it," I muttered. "He won't let us go."**

"Let them go," Piper said.

"He can't hear you," Demeter said, confusedly.

Piper blushed and nuzzled herself in Jason's chest.

Aphrodite smiled weirdly and put her hands over her mouth to keep from giggling.

 **"Of course he will," my mom said evenly. "Your stepfather is just worried about money. That's all. Besides," she added, "Gabriel won't have to settle for bean dip. I'll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend. Guacamole. Sour cream. The works."**

 **Gabe softened a bit. "So this money for your trip... it comes out of your clothes budget, right?"**

 **"Yes, honey," my mother said.**

 **"And you won't take my car anywhere but there and back."**

 **"We'll be very careful."**

 **Gabe scratched his double chin. "Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer dip... And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game."**

 **Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano for a week.**

"Oooh!" Jason cried. "That would be _ver_ y unfortunate for him! The _bifurcum_ is a very sensitive place, and not just for certain monsters," he stated, sounding a lot like Annabeth.

 **But my mom's eyes warned me not to make him mad.**

"Yep, knowing you, you would probably blow up the house," Grover bleated.

Poseidon's worry of his kid came back.

 **Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what he thought?**

 **"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I'm really sorry I interrupted your incredibly important poker game. Please go back to it right now."**

Grover bit back a laugh. He wasn't very good at hiding it, though, his goatee on his chin swished back and forth as his chin trembled.

 **Gabe's eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in my statement.**

 **"Yeah, whatever," he decided.**

 **He went back to his game.**

 **"Thank you, Percy," my mom said. "Once we get to Montauk, we'll talk more about... whatever you've forgotten to tell me, okay?"**

 **For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes—the same fear I'd seen in Grover during the bus ride—as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.**

"She knows, too!" Leo said, using the same gesture when he said Grover knows.

 **But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.**

 **An hour later we were ready to leave.**

 **Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my mom's bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking—and more important, his '78 Camaro—for the whole weekend.**

 **"Not a scratch on this car, brain boy," he warned me as I loaded the last bag. "Not one little scratch."**

"Definitely _not_ just a scratch," Grover mumbled.

 **Like I'd be the one driving.**

"That sounds like you're putting the blame on your mom," Hephaestus commented. Which was weird coming from Hephaestus.

 **I was twelve. But that didn't matter to Gabe. If a seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he'd find a way to blame me.**

 **Watching him lumber back toward the apartment building, I got so mad I did something I can't explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand gesture I'd seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement toward Gabe. The screen door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the staircase as if he'd been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some freak accident with the hinges, but I didn't stay long enough to find out.**

They started laughing at the image.

 **I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.**

 **Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the sea was too cold to swim in.**

Annabeth shuddered. "Spiders..." she whispered.

 **I loved the place.**

 **We'd been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It was the place where she'd met my dad.**

 **As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the color of the sea.**

 **We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin's windows, and went through our usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other free samples my mom had brought from work.**

"Blue food..." Poseidon smiled at the thought of having blue food.

 **I guess I should explain the blue food.**

 **See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. This—along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson, rather than calling herself Mrs. Ugliano—was proof that she wasn't totally suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.**

"Yep," Percy agreed with himself. "Plus, you know, Poseidon stuff and everything," he added.

 **When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when she had enough money to quit the candy shop.**

 **Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind whenever we came to Montauk—my father. Mom's eyes went all misty. I figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of hearing them.**

 **"He was kind, Percy," she said. "Tall, handsome, and powerful. But gentle, too. You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes."**

Poseidon swelled with pride, and Zeus gave him a death glare at the mention of the beginning of him breaking the oath.

 **Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. "I wish he could see you, Percy. He would be so proud."**

 **I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic, hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in six years.**

 **"How old was I?" I asked. "I mean... when he left?"**

 **She watched the flames. "He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right here at this beach. This cabin."**

 **"But... he knew me as a baby."**

"Bay," Leo said weirdly, opening his palms and fire danced on it. He quickly shut it off before any of the gods noticed what he did. "Sorry," he quickly muttered.

 **"No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to leave before you were born."**

 **I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember... something about my father. A warm glow. A smile.**

 **I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I'd felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he'd never even seen me...**

 **I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He'd left us, and now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.**

Poseidon sighed, and Zeus stopped glaring at him.

 **"Are you going to send me away again?" I asked her. "To another boarding school?"**

Grover sucked in a breath. "Not a good subject..."

 **She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.**

"Mmmm," Leo rubbed his belly.

Hazel stuck out her tongue at him.

 **"I don't know, honey." Her voice was heavy. "I think... I think we'll have to do something."**

 **"Because you don't want me around?" I regretted the words as soon as they were out.**

A few gasped.

 **My mom's eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. "Oh, Percy, no. I—I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away."**

 **Her words reminded me of what Mr. Brunner had said—that it was best for me to leave Yancy.**

 **"Because I'm not normal," I said.**

"No, very far from it."

 **"You say that as if it's a bad thing, Percy. But you don't realize how important you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you'd finally be safe."**

 **"Safe from what?"**

"Never!" Leo said, imitating the Fates.

"Why do they have to be so cruel?" Annabeth cried, which was unlike her, but she put her face in her hands and Percy wrapped his arms around her. Even the toughest have to break...

 **She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me—all the weird, scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I'd tried to forget.**

 **During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broad-brimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.**

"Tyson?" Percy asked. But he knew that this Cyclopes wouldn't be friendly.

 **Before that—a really early memory. I was in preschool, and a teacher accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp, scaly rope I'd somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler hands.**

Hephaestus made a strange face.

"Now that... that I don't know why that has to do with being a demigod," Athena said confusedly.

 **In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe, and I was forced to move.**

 **I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my math teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn't make myself tell her. I had a strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn't want that.**

 **"I've tried to keep you as close to me as I could," my mom said. "They told me that was a mistake. But there's only one other option, Percy—the place your father wanted to send you. And I just... I just can't stand to do it."**

 **"My father wanted me to go to a special school?"**

 **"Not a school," she said softly. "A summer camp."**

"Camp Half-Blood," Annabeth said, smiling.

Percy's heart swirled when seeing Annabeth smiling.

 **My head was spinning. Why would my dad—who hadn't even stayed around long enough to see me born— talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it was so important, why hadn't she ever mentioned it before?**

 **"I'm sorry, Percy," she said, seeing the look in my eyes. "But I can't talk about it. I—I couldn't send you to that place. It might mean saying goodbye to you for good."**

 **"For good? But if it's only a summer camp..."**

 **She turned toward the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her any more questions she would start to cry.**

 **That night I had a vivid dream.**

 **It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse, and a golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle swooped down and slashed the horse's muzzle with its huge talons. The horse reared up and kicked at the eagle's wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled, and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the animals to fight harder.**

"Kronos is the voice," Annabeth noted.

"Then, the eagle is Zeus and the horse is Poseidon," Percy finished.

Zeus and Poseidon looked at each other nervously.

 **I ran toward them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive down, its beak aimed at the horse's wide eyes, and I screamed, No!**

 **I woke with a start.**

 **Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making false daylight, and twenty-foot waves pounding the dunes like artillery.**

"So they aren't fighting, but they are fighting," Piper said.

 **With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said, "Hurricane."**

 **I knew that was crazy. Long Island never sees hurricanes this early in the summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.**

"Hurricanes are water with warm and cold winds, right?" Hazel asked.

"Uh, kind of?"

"So it's Zeus' fault?" Piper shot back.

Some did an intake on breath. Percy expected the god to explode, but he didn't. He just stared, possibly debating on how he felt.

 **Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice—someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.**

 **My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.**

 **Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But he wasn't... he wasn't exactly Grover.**

 **"Searching all night," he gasped. "What were you thinking?"**

 **My mother looked at me in terror—not scared of Grover, but of why he'd come.**

 **"Percy," she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. "What happened at school? What didn't you tell me?"**

 **I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn't understand what I was seeing.**

 **"O Zeu kai alloi theoi!" he yelled. "It's right behind me! Didn't you tell her?"**

"Ο Ζευ και άλλοι θεοί!" Athena randomly shouted. "Zeus and the other gods," she translated when everybody started looking at the wisdom goddess. She gave her father a glare that would have had anybody running.

"Wait, Zeus and the other gods are behind Grover?" Piper again asked, obviously confused.

"I think it's just a curse. Something is behind Grover. Maybe Mrs. Dodds?" Jason said.

"That's not possible. I thought Percy killed her?" Frank said.

 **I was too shocked to register that he'd just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I'd understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had gotten here by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn't have his pants on—and where his legs should be... where his legs should be...**

"Is naked body!" Leo burst out.

Despite the panic in the situation, everybody laughed.

"Hm, so that's the name of the chap—" Apollo realized, but Thalia cut in front of the sun god.

 **My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she'd never used before: "Percy. Tell me now!"**

Annabeth started shaking Percy, yelling at him of why in Hades would he have kept such an important deal a secret.

 **I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs. Dodds, and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.**

 **She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"**

 **Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and still limp when he walked.**

 **Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven hooves.**

Grover made a derp face.

"Ohh," Apollo realized. "He lost his pant— oh, okay, yeah I get it now," he said, rubbing his neck awkwardly.

"So, uh, are we going to get lunch?" Leo asked, breaking the silence.

Hazel punched him on the arm. "We've only been reading for 30 minutes! Lunch is in more than two hours!"

Leo laughed then started playfully fighting with Hazel. Frank felt a twinge of jealousy, and told himself that he knew Hazel would be there for _him_ and would never leave him alone.

Suddenly everybody just started playfully freaking out.

"Uh, is this normal?" Athena asked her daughter. She shrugged. "Maybe, we haven't really have had much time with each other so it's kind of like a break for us."

"So. Uh, who will read next?" Thalia said.

Jason opened his mouth but before he could speak, Thalia threw the book at him.


	5. My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting

**A/N - whenever a chapter starts, it's always in 3rd point of view of limited 3rd point of view. If there is a **POV** then it's a character's own POV. If it's /NAME/ then it's in the same point of view Rick Riordan has in his Heroes of Olympus series.**

* * *

Jason felt dizzy when he got hit by a 400-page book.

He glared angrily at Thalia but started to read.

 **Chapter 4**

 **My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting**

 **We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.**

"Wonder if you're still going to Montauk—?" Leo asked.

"Are you _crazy?!"_ Annabeth said frantically. Percy already to her the story, but hearing it again from Percy's point of view was really frightening.

 **Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants. But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.**

Grover made a face. "Really?"

Percy winced. "Sorry man," he said, then smiled sadly.

 **All I could think to say was, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"**

"Not exactly," Grover said.

 **Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said.**

"Why did you literally quote yourself?" Demeter said.

"Well, I mean, I already have said it in the past before," Grover explained.

But before Jason could continue reading, Hades visibly winced, then covered his head.

"You should eat more cereal!" Demeter shouted, pointing at Percy.

"Uh—"

"I mean, look how thin he is! Also, that Hephaestus kid is way too scrawny for a demigod!"

Hades groaned. "Why did you point that out _now?"_

 **"I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."**

Thalia shuddered. "That sounds creepy."

"Well, technically, that's what many demigods have done to you, while you were, you know, a pine tree," Annabeth winced.

Thalia groaned. "Don't remind me."

 **"Watching me?"**

 **"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay.**

"Making sure you followed the rules," Poseidon wished.

 **But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend."**

 **"Urm... what are you, exactly?"**

"Satyr," the Greek demigods said, right as the Roman said, "Faun."

"Satyr," Jason quickly corrected, then blushed.

 **"That doesn't matter right now."**

"It doesn't matter?" Annabeth almost fell over.

"Not right now," Athena said. "He is in grave danger—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know that," Annabeth said, tired of her mother blantly pointing out all of Percy's "flaws."

 **"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"**

Thalia snorted.

 **Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"**

 **I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.**

"Yes!" Grover cried. "Donkey!" he said, then stared at Percy with a mixture of saddness and anger.

"What?" Percy replied. "Didn't know what you were back then."

 **"Goat!" he cried.**

 **"What?"**

 **"I'm a goat from the waist down."**

 **"You just said it didn't matter."**

"Wow," Annabeth said, but without amazement. "Really?"

"Yes," Percy replied, quickly and stated matter-of-factly.

 **"Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"**

 **"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like... Mr. Brunner's myths?"**

 **"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"**

 **"So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!"**

 **"Of course."**

"Then why—" Frank started to say.

 **"Then why—"**

"Melm," Leo said.

"What?"

 **"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."**

"It is completely obvious," Dionysus said.

"When you find out you're a magical being and monsters are trying to eat you?" Percy snapped.

"When me, Piper, and Leo found out we were halfbloods, it wasn't that bad," Jason said.

"Coach Hedge got flicked away and we almost fell down a canyon. How is that _not bad?"_ Piper said.

"Uh, realization?" Jason said, before getting a peanut flicked at his head. "Why is it always my head?" He wondered aloud, exhausted.

 **"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"**

 **The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.**

"Wonder what that could be," Artemis thought.

 **"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."**

 **"Safety from what? Who's after me?"**

 **"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."**

At the mention of Hades, Poseidon turned and glared at him for putting his son in danger. So did a lot of the other gods, because they hated him. Why? _Nobody knows~_

 **"Grover!"**

 **"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"**

 **I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.**

"Are you sure about that?" Annabeth looked incredulously at him.

"Sure about what?" Percy responded.

"No imagination?"

"Yes."

"Hmmm."

 **My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.**

 **"Where are we going?" I asked.**

 **"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."**

"So brave and noble," Poseidon admired.

 **"The place you didn't want me to go."**

 **"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."**

 **"Because some old ladies cut yarn."**

Suddenly Artemis flared with anger. "Boy, those aren't just any old ladies! Do you know how dangerous this is?"

Percy didn't have anything against the Goddess of the Hunt, but he was tired of people—especially gods—telling him what he should have done in the _past_ , when obviously he couldn't change now.

He kept it in.

 **"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to... when someone's about to die."**

 **"Whoa. You said 'you.'"**

"No he didn't," Frank said, completely oblivious to the tone Jason said it in.

"You know, Frank, I wish I could be as ignorant as you," Percy said to him.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

 **"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"**

 **"You meant 'you.' As in me."**

"Oh."

 **"I meant you, like 'someone.' Not you, you."**

 **"Boys!" my mom said.**

 **She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.**

"What was that?" Piper asked, scared.

 **"What was that?" I asked.**

"You could be a great mom," Percy said.

"Har, har."

Suddenly, outside turned dark and rain started pouring.

"What the—"

"Zeus?"

"Not me," he said, not guilty (for the first time)

"Let's just keep reading," Leo said, but he was shaking too.

 **"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."**

The air dropped 10 degrees.

 **I didn't know where there was,**

"Somewhere safe," Thalia breathed.

 **but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.**

 **Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn't been human. She'd meant to kill me.**

 **Then I thought about Mr. Brunner... and the sword he had thrown me. Before I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.**

 **I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.**

 **I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow."**

Percy rubbed his head. "Ow is an understatement."

"Yeah, that's what I've also been wondering," Grover said. "Is how much pain you endure but you basically feel nothing. Like, how?"

"Don't know, I guess it's normal for a demigod who fights every day for their lives," Jason said.

"Sorry," Grover winced. "It just seems more realistic. Then to be, you know, practically invincible and non-guilt tripped?"

 **"Percy!" my mom shouted.**

 **"I'm okay... ."**

 **I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.**

"Percy essence," Jason said.

"What?" Percy said, not thinking he heard clearly.

"Rain."

"Uh, oh."

"What kind of conversation was that?" Piper asked incredulously.

 **Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. "Grover!"**

 **He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die**

 **Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.**

"Is food all you really need?" Hazel shook her head at him.

 **"Percy," my mother said, "we have to..." Her voice faltered.**

 **I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.**

The gods started guessing who or what it could be.

"Orion," Artemis shuddered.

"Achelous?" Poseidon thought.

"What?" he said, when people were staring at him with confusion. "He has horns."

"Yes, until Hercules ripped off one of them. In the description is clearly says _horns,"_ Zeus said.

"Hmmm," the others thought.

Jason continued.

I **swallowed hard. "Who is—"**

 **"Percy," my mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."**

 **My mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.**

 **"Climb out the passenger's side!" my mother told me. "Percy—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"**

"Thalia's tree," Annabeth murmured, remembering all the nice Camp Half-Blood memories. She really missed that place, even if she was there about a week ago.

"How did you get out anyways?" Zeus asked Thalia.

"Erm, kind of long story? The book will probably cover that."

 **"What?"**

 **Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.**

 **"That's the property line," my mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."**

"How does she know all of this?" Zeus asked suspiciously.

Poseidon looked away, whistling and acting all innocent but failing horribly.

 **"Mom, you're coming too."**

"She can't, she's mortal," Apollo pointed out.

"I just realized, how did Rachel get through?" Piper said. She remembered the brief interaction with Rachel, when she delivered the message of Hera to free her.

"She's still mortal, but she has the Delphi thing," said Percy. "That's probably why."

 **Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.**

 **"No!" I shouted. "You are coming with me. Help me carry Grover."**

 **"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.**

 **The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn't be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head... was his head. And the points that looked like horns...**

"How did you mistake fur for a blanket? They are like, nowhere similar," Annabeth pointed out.

"They are soft," replied Percy.

 **"He doesn't want us," my mother told me. "He wants you. Besides, I can't cross the property line."**

 **"But..."**

 **"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."**

 **I got mad, then—mad at my mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.**

 **I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom."**

"She can't! You have to go!" Hazel said frantically.

Percy felt like they weren't even talking to _him._

 **"I told you—"**

 **"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."**

 **I didn't wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn't have carried him very far if my mom hadn't come to my aid.**

 **Together, we draped Grover's arms over our shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass.**

 **Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear—I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.**

The gods gasped.

 **His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.**

"What?!" Poseidon nearly fell off his throne. "The Minotaur?"

"I know," Hades said annoyed. "He has the luck of the Fates' entertainment."

"You could have prevented this," Poseidon accused Hades.

"What could I have done?"

Hades was being calm, (which was weird) while Poseidon was freaking out. Their bickering subsided but still continued as Jason read over them. Which was probably rude, but the gods couldn't do anything and he savored that moment. He probably shouldn't have, he told himself. I'm a Roman praetor, I should show more respect.

 **I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us. But he couldn't be real.**

 **I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"**

 **"Pasiphae's son," my mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."**

 **"But he's the Min—"**

"Don't say its name!"

"His," Poseidon corrected.

 **"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."**

"How does she know all of this? And how can she see the Minotaur?" Piper asked.

"She's special," Percy whispered softly.

 **The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.**

 **I glanced behind me again.**

 **The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.**

 **"Food?" Grover moaned.**

"At least he's got his priorities straight," Leo joked.

 **"Shhh," I told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"**

 **"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."**

 **As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.**

 **Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.**

 **Oops.**

"Ha!" Thalia shouted. "Sucks for you."

 **"Percy," my mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"**

 **"How do you know all this?"**

 **"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me."**

 **"Keeping me near you? But—"**

"Just go, Percy!"

 **Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.**

 **He'd smelled us.**

 **The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker, and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.**

 **The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.**

 **My mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Separate! Remember what I said."**

 **I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.**

"And of course you notice basically everything," Annabeth says. "But you can't focus?"

"That's ADHD's problem," Percy pouted. Annabeth pecked him on the lips.

Athena glared at Poseidon's son but she realized how much they cared for each other and how he made Annabeth happy.

 **He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my chest.**

 **The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn't work. I could never outrun this thing. So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the side.**

 **The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.**

"No! Why is he going for her?" Piper half-sobbed, being the child of Aphrodite, she sensed Percy's pain for reliving this moment.

The others except for Aphrodite and the ones who knew about this moment looked at her weirdly. "Uh, Pipes, are you okay?" Jason said, rubbing her back. She nodded feebly.

 **We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.**

 **The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.**

 **"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any farther. Run!"**

 **But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her.**

Frank shook his head. "Bad time to freeze. I've learned my lesson."

"I think," he quickly added. Hazel wrapped her arms around him for comfort.

 **She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.**

 **"Mom!"**

 **She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"**

Piper widened her eyes. Hazel stood and her mouth gaped.

"What?" Apollo said. "Have you just found out my true beauty?"

 **Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother's neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply... gone.**

"No..." Percy whispered. He melted into Annabeth's embrace. The rest was shocked.

"She never told me— I never knew—" Poseidon mumbled, shocked. "How—?"

"How would you know? You're from the past," Percy said.

"What... happened to her?" Piper asked incredulously, looking at Hades. "Why did she disappear like a monster would?"

Hades shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He probably knew what his future self knew or... _did._

 **"No!"**

 **Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same rush of energy I'd gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.**

"That's good at least..." Artemis pointed out.

Aphrodite looked at her like she had grown two heads.

"No—! Not—that his mother's gone, that he gets adrenaline when something is in danger, instead of freezing or being overwhelmed with pain and emotion." She said the last part with a bitter edge.

 **The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.**

 **I couldn't allow that.**

 **I stripped off my red rain jacket.**

 **"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"**

Despite the tension, Leo laughed softly. "Are you trying to do what they do to bulls in rodeos? 'Cause I don't think that's gonna work..."

 **"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.**

 **I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I'd jump out of the way at the last moment.**

 **But it didn't happen like that.**

 **The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.**

"Hmm..." Piper scratched her chin. "I'm trying to imagine it— nope, I can't."

 **Time slowed down.**

"Kronos?" Zeus said madly, looking from side to side.

"No, it's an ADHD observation because it clearly felt like that."

 **My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.**

"How did you do that?" Frank said, amazed.

"I think—" Percy said, but Leo cut him off.

"Percy essence!" he said, like it was totally obvious.

 **How did I do that? I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.**

 **The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.**

 **The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.**

 **Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I'd bite my own tongue off.**

"Ulgh," Aphrodite said, shaking her hands. "That'd be not good."

 **"Food!" Grover moaned.**

 **The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—snap!**

"Eek!" Demeter shrieked, and grabbed a very startled Hades.

"Demeter!" Hades comaplined, which wasn't an everyday sight you see Hades acting like a kid.

 **The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.**

 **The monster charged.**

 **Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.**

 **The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.**

 **The monster was gone.**

 **The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go.**

"He'd be great in battle," Ares noted.

"He _is_ great in battle," Annabeth said.

 **The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's. They both looked down at me, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."**

"Ooooooooooh," Aphrodite giggled.

Annabeth turned to Percy, her cheeks flushed. "You really thought I looked like a princess?"

"Uh," was all Percy could manage.

Annabeth smiled. She wasn't a princess type and also didn't want to be compared with a princess, but the compliment was good enough for her.

 **"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Bring him inside."**

Jason sighed and he put the book down. He looked around. "At least Percy can't get into _too_ much trouble now!"

"And why is that?" Percy said, slightly offended.

"You have Annabeth now," was his reply.

They both blushed, but for Percy, some of it was him being offended. It was true though, he admitted. Annabeth leaned and kissed him. "Ew, get a room!" Piper said.

"What's the matter, Beauty Queen?" Percy said as he pulled away, smirking.

Apollo, who was pretending not to care about the story so far, felt his heart ache at seeing Percy and Annabeth mingle.

* * *

"The Underworld is confusing. Like imaging Heaven.

"Most people wander aimlessly in the Underworld, fields of asphodel and they forget who they are, trying to think what they want. (Or something) they forget who they really are.  
In the Fields of Punishment, is it the same way? Do they remember themselves? Or do they only remember what bad deeds they did?

"In Elysium, probably remember who you are and what you did and everything.  
What about in the Isles of the Blest or Rebirth? When you rebirth, do you remember your past lives? No. You get bathed in the river Lethe. Probably turn into something different than before, like a mortal rather than a demigod sometimes.  
What about in the Isles of the Blest? Do you remember only one of your past lives? All? None? You get the River Lethe washed over you when you try for rebirth, removing all your memories. Is this permanent?

"Now I hate the Isles of the Blest. It's more of a cowardly decision than a determined one. You forget all your past memories, guilt, mistakes, and everything literally.

"This is why everything in life is confusing."

-Luna


End file.
